Odyssey 3.491 · Book 3, lines 491–497
Dawn, and on toward Sparta — Book 3 ends
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ἦμος δʼ ἠριγένεια φάνη ῥοδοδάκτυλος Ἠώς, ἵππους τε ζεύγνυντʼ ἀνά θʼ ἅρματα ποικίλʼ ἔβαινον· ἐκ δʼ ἔλασαν προθύροιο καὶ αἰθούσης ἐριδούπου· μάστιξεν δʼ ἐλάαν, τὼ δʼ οὐκ ἀέκοντε πετέσθην. ἷξον δʼ ἐς πεδίον πυρηφόρον, ἔνθα δʼ ἔπειτα ἦνον ὁδόν· τοῖον γὰρ ὑπέκφερον ὠκέες ἵπποι. δύσετό τʼ ἠέλιος σκιόωντό τε πᾶσαι ἀγυιαί.
And when Dawn appeared, early-born and rosy-fingered, they yoked the horses and mounted up onto the inlaid chariot; they drove out from the gateway and the loud-sounding portico; he cracked the whip to drive them on, and the pair, not unwilling, flew on. They reached the wheat-bearing plain, and there then finished the journey; for the swift horses bore them on so fast. The sun set, and all the ways grew dark.
Word by word
The setting
The travellers spent the night at Pherae in the house of Diocles. Now the second day of the journey to Sparta begins, the horses running the wheat-plain until nightfall — and Book 3 comes to its end.
A note on this passage
The second morning, and the same departure repeats: rosy-fingered Dawn, the yoking of the team, the drive out through the echoing gateway, the whip, the eager horses. They cross the wheat-bearing plain and press the journey to its end, borne by a team too swift to check, until the sun sets a second time. On that darkening road Book 3 closes.
The undercurrent is the ending itself. Line 494 repeats 484 word for word — Homer's oral technology, the same verse reused to carry the same action. And the book stops mid-motion, the travellers not yet arrived: the sun goes down over the road to Sparta, and the poem holds Telemachus one dusk short of Menelaus's door, saving the great house for Book 4.
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Odyssey 3.491 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/3.491/